Neuroscience and Prosocial Behavior in Disasters
Protevi's article, Evolution, Neuroscience, and Prosocial Behavior in Disasters, raises extremely interesting questions concerning the both the role of the media in disaster coverage and the neuroscience of prosocial behaviors exhibited by those living in areas recently affected by disaster. Primarily, the author criticizes the media for their creation of feelings of panic and fear in their coverage of various disasters, falsely claiming that it is human nature to resort to violence and cruelty when the government has been rendered temporarily inoperable. Protevi claims, in contrast to this belief, that people naturally exhibit prosocial, positive behaviors when these disasters occur, as neuroscience evidence supports the belief that empathy is a natural resting state of the mind, while panic and anti-social behaviors require provocation, typically offered by the media during these times. For example, the media falsely stated that many survivors of hurricane Katrina were resorting to violent acts against their neighbors and fellow survivors, when, in actuality, the opposite was true. This article highlights the natural tendency and neurological basis for empathy during times of disaster, and the harm that can be caused by wrongly inciting panic and fear in those affected by these troubling times.
Questions:
1. What do you believe this article supports regarding human nature in general?
2. In what other circumstances has the media been known to resort to fear-mongering, and how might this negatively impact both the victims and those relatively detached from the situation?
3. Do you believe that empathy is something inherent in all of humanity from a neurological perspective, or do you believe that it is learned, or perhaps a bit of both?
I found the articles reflections on human nature very intriguing. The media has always been known to exacerbate the fears of its viewers, especially in situations regarding issues such as terrorism and political extremism. This has the adverse effect of further polarizing already deleterious situations. Despite this, I would agree that empathy is at least to some degree inherent in human nature. Empathy is evolutionarily advantageous for a species to have, die to it promoting cooperation within a species. This is not to say that certain aspects of empathy cannot be affected by cultural factors though.
ReplyDeleteThis article overall seemed to suggest that human nature is good. When faced with disaster, we naturally remain calm and reach to help others. However, it is the media that depicts humans as corrupt in the face of disaster. A good representation of fear mongering among the media is the skewed perspective that they tend to create of immigrants. They portray immigrants as criminals, who you have to protect your family from. This portrayal creates a hostile environment for immigrants (and often for anyone who "appears to be immigrants"), tending to put them at risk mentally and physically. Those who watch these forms of media tend to truly believe what they are being told, and create this hostile environment that immigrants experience. Rather then viewing immigrants as people seeking shelter, they are viewed as people who enter the country only to commit crimes and feed off the money of the government. I think empathy is both learned and neurological. I think this, not just because I took psychology last semester (lol), but also because it is an innate ability that we are capable of, but we are taught whether to practice this ability or not.
ReplyDeleteThe article believes that humans are good by nature and that they only act selfishly when prompted. The media tends to fear-monger a lot, even when there aren't unique circumstances. Studies show that the present day is much safer than previous decades, but a lot of people believe it's more dangerous because of the way the media chooses to focus on the negative things rather than reporting that crime is overall down in the USA (which is admittedly a rather boring news story). I want to believe that empathy is born into humans, but I just don't know. There are plenty of people who were terrible children that grew into reasonable human beings and there are plenty of people who were normal children who grew up into psychos.
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